Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:25:35.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gerontocratic Government: Age-Sets in Pre-Colonial Giriama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Cynthia Brantley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the protection of their kaya home deep in the forest of the Mombasa hinterland, the Giriama of Kenya developed a non-centralized government based on a council of elders (kambi), and derived from age-sets. They were supported by a special secret society within the kambi whose oath and select membership were used to maintain order and determine guilt in difficult situations. In the period from approximately 1700 until sometime in the nineteenth century, the Giriama developed this form of government by drawing upon their previous experience of life in Singwaya and subsequent southward migration, upon their identification or assimilation of members into six original clans, and upon their unique environment of the kaya neighborhood to become successful cultivators, keeping cattle when circumstances allowed and emerging as the prominent traders of the Mombasa hinterland.

Résumé

GOUVERNEMENT GÉRONTOCRATIQUE: GROUPEMENTS PAR ȂGE CHEZ LES GIRIAMA AU COURS DE LA PÉRIODE PRÉ-COLONIALE

A la suite d'une migration où ils quittèrent le Singwaya avec les autres Mijikenda auxquels ils étaient apparentés, les Giriama vécurent pendant plus de deux siècles dans une clairière fortifiée désignée par le terme de kaya, dissimulée dans l'épaisse forêt de l'arrière-pays Mombasa. Faisant usage de nombreux renseignements oraux, le présent article décrit le système de gouvernement qui était en vigueur chez les Giriama au cours de leur résidence dans le kaya: on y souligne l'héritage considérable de la pèriode Singwaya et certains aspects communs à d'autres Mijikenda: on précise également l'importance de l'effondrement de ce système au cours d'une période de dispersion se situant au dix-neuvième siècle avant l'installation du colonialisme anglais.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 1978 , pp. 248 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brantley, Cynthia 1973 The Giriama rising, 1914: focus for political development in the Kenya hinterland, 1850–1963. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, submitted under the name Cynthia Brantley Smith.Google Scholar
Burton, Richard 1872 Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast. 2 vols. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champion, A. M. 1967 [c. 1915] The Agiryama of Kenya. Ed. by Middleton, John. London: Royal Anthropological Institute.Google Scholar
Dyson-Hudson, Neville 1963 ‘The Karimojong age system,’ Ethnology 2: 353–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gulliver, P. H. 1953 ‘The age-set organization of the Jie tribe,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropology Instituted: 147–68.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Alan 1965 The traditional political organization of the pastoral Maasai. Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford.Google Scholar
Kazungu, Victor Gona 1974 Agiriama: the rise of a tribe and its traditions. Manuscript, History Department, University of Nairobi.Google Scholar
Kenya Population Census 1969 Nairobi, Government Printers.Google Scholar
Krapf, J. L. 1860 Travels, Researches and Missionary Labour in East Africa. London.Google Scholar
Middleton, J. and Kershaw, G. 1965 The Kikuyu and Kamba of Kenya (Ethnographic Survey of Africa). London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Muriuki, Godfrey 1974 A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
New, Charles 1874 Wanderings and Labours in Eastern Africa. London.Google Scholar
Prins, A. H. J. 1952 The Coastal Tribes of the Northeastern Bantu (Ethnographic Survey of Africa). London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Saberwal, Satish 1970 The Traditional Political System of the Embu of Central Africa. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.Google Scholar
Spear, T. T. 1974a ‘Traditional myths and historian's myths: variations on the Singwaya theme of Mijikenda origins,’ History in Africa 1: 67–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spear, T. T 1974b The kaya complex: a history of the Mijikenda peoples of the Kenya coast to 1900. Ph.D. Thesis, Wisconsin. Publication forthcoming.Google Scholar
Spear, T. T 1976 ‘Traditional myths and linguistic analysis: Singwaya revisited,’ History in Africa 2.Google Scholar
Taylor, W. E. 1891 Giriama Vocabulary and Collections. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.Google Scholar
Werner, Alice 1914 ‘The Bantu coast tribes of the East African Protectorate,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 45: 326–54.Google Scholar
Werner, Alice 1917 ‘WaNyika,’ in Hastings, R. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 9: 424–7.Google Scholar
Werner, Alice 1919/1920 ‘The native tribes of British Africa,’ Journal of the African Society 19: 285–94.Google Scholar